To think parents completing their childrens A level work is unfair.

[GlamGiraffe]

I dont mean helping a bit, I mean doing the coursework themselves.

DS is in the final year of a levels and goes to a school with a particularly high population of parents who are artists, designers etc by profession. He is battling to complete his work for both art and dt and despite working away at school and home is not managing to keep up to anything near the same level as a lot of the students. Recently they have been laughing and commenting about how their parents do all of their work, one girls mother apparently has written more than 80% of her history of art essay alone which comprises a significant proportion of the mark, another boys mother has produced all of his DT work and produced all the drawings etc. These are just as examples of the type of things that are happeneing).

I am aware we all try to help our children but surely there has to be a line (And we dont all have the same suitable skills). Children are not being marked against their peers any longer. A different marking system needs to be instigated. Perhaps smaller projects only carried out in school?
Am I unreasonable to think the system is now ridiculously unfair?

You've hit the nail on the head there 'TheHagOnTheHill'.
When my ds1 started highschool one homework was to create a castle out of used things. The kid who won had not only had his mum do most of it but they had gone to B&Q and bought alot of the material brand new.
The same child had, over the years in primary, won the 'homework hero' award every time it was a large project.

Of course it starts in Primary School.

When my eldest was about 6 his homework was to make a Viking Longhouse model. We bodged what we could with wool on the roof and beds made out of cardboard and badly painted. I helped, he did 90% of it. And it looked very much as if a 6 year old had done it.

The classroom display was something else. One model with wired up electrics so you flicked a switch and the firepit flickered. Another made in wood, with mortice and tenon joints. A third with needle felted animals inside the house with the hand crocheted Vikings.

Neither of my older kids are doing those sort of art/design subjects but the oldest is heading for his Highers in May and has assessed project work as part of the final exam in all subjects apart from Maths. The project accounts for 20% to 30% of the mark but it is done in school time, over the course of a week or a fortnight.

And yes, cheating goes on at Uni too. I am a freelance writer and about a year ago was approached by someone locally asking my to write her dissertation on a very niche subject. Subject that a friend of mine teaches at a local Uni - she knew the student concerned and the uni came down on her like a tonne of bricks. I think they still let her graduate but she had to go through the equivalent of a viva for her undergraduate dissertation which is almost unheard of.

I do know one friend who openly admits to doing her son's homework early in secondary and who spent hours every night tutoring him through his gcses. The fact is he has autism and she felt it was the only way to keep him in mainstream school. As his development has gone on, she's faded the support very effectively. I dont know how he will do at the end of sixth form but it will be his own work. I just can't get upset about it, but of course it's my friend so I see her perspective.

Mostly I think it's just a rawer version of the advantages some children have. But pretty amazed at the idea that university work can be affected.

There is a huge difference between tutoring and having someone else do the work.

Look at people like Felicity Huffman. Her daughter had all the advantages in life, an expensive school, private tutor, whatever she needed and that’s fine, but she crossed a line and cheated and went to prison for it.

It would be if I did my dd’s homework. She’s doing sciences for A-level and I know NOTHING about them.

A friend of a dd whose father had done the same degree course, just used his final year dissertation more or less as it was.

I’ve been guilty of helping 😈 but only after a dd asked whether I could please knit a lemon for a friend whose deadline for her Home Economics project (a knitted basket of fruit and veg, WTF?) was imminent. IIRC she did knit a cauliflower, the lemon was a piece of piss by comparison.

GCSE project, should have said.

YANBU. It happens in university too!! Essays/posters etc get As but invigilated exams on the same subject they are failing or getting Ds. It’s disgraceful. It’s made me question my entire teaching outlook - used to be quite against exams but now it seems to be the only way to genuinely know it’s the student’s own work.

Some people do fall to pieces in exams though, so poor performance might not be because they aren't doing their own work.

Ed Sheeran confessed that his mum completed all of his art practical for him while he was away touring for 3 or 4 months.

My friend did this for both her kids at school - only one wanted her help at University - with course work and dissertation in a creative subject. He was creative and was capable of doing the work - he was just lacked motivation and was a bit of a mess in his head - that has not resolved itself and probably never will.

I'm a solicitor and have observed plenty of colleagues "helping" (writing) university essays, dissertations, job applications, even their work when the little darlings are employed. It's horrifying and unethical

This is simply awful. How can any of them be ok with this? Do they not realise that they’re not helping them in the long run? They’re making things worse... one day mommy and daddy won’t be around anymore!!

I am beyond gobsmacked at this thread. I can’t believe this actually goes on!

It has always happened, I remember it when I was at school. My parents didn't but they weren't academic people.

Most parents will discuss the work with their child, it's not just a question of writing all their work for them.

If someone is doing 3 A levels there's bound to be one subject that is more challenging than the others but, with help, they could get a respectable pass and I think that is what the 'helpful' parents are trying to do.

YANBU. It's one thing getting a tutor for your child or tutoring yourself if you're able to but a completely different one actually physically doing the work! I taught at undergrad level and there was definitely a trend of students being less independent on arriving at university. God knows ow these students will cope when they're expected to stand on their own two feet.

I was one of those children at primary school who always took in the immaculate parent-made models and artwork (by DM). I distinctly remember looking at the very-obviously handmade work of my classmates and thinking how much fun it would have been to do WITH DM, instead of me sitting and watching her.
My DF also did the majority of my ICT ALevel coursework. I remember handing it in and hoping that my teacher didn't ask me any questions about it as I had no clue what it was about. No moral of the story here, as I got an A, although I think that sitting me down and helping would have helped considerably more in the long run.
As a result, I'm now very conscious of letting DD4 do her own artwork and homework, and offering help instead of completely taking over. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue when there's paint smeared everywhere and glitter all over the floor though..!

I’m just about to complete a degree in education as an adult learner. I’m at a terrible university. The lectures are comedy bad and are mostly copied from the internet. The behaviour of students - many adults is akin to an episode of Jeremy Kyle.
We are no where near the lecture hours we should be and then staff are passing people left right and centre to keep numbers up.
The degree has approx 8 presentations as part of the structure- there is one student who I have NEVER seen present and she’s apparently ‘meeting requirements’ and passing.
Our lecturer informed some of the other students gleefully yesterday- ‘don’t worry about your results - you can get into teacher training with a 2.2 these days - they’re desperate”.

Aspirational.

When my friend was doing her PhD, one of her family members asked her to write their daughter's undergrad dissertation. My friend said no, but she is aware that the family member then went on to pay someone else to write it.

I think it's a disgrace. I'd never be able to look at my degree certificate again knowing that I didn't earn it.

I have done some tutoring and am sometimes surprised by what these parents are paying me for and how involved they are generally. Parents who have done all the research for their children's degree courses and sometimes selected courses that don't even match their children's interests. (Often without even up to date information about what will turn out to be employable or what admissions are looking for). I sympathise with their anxiety since there is a lot more pressure now but I don't think they're helping their children long term.

It really doesn't help them in the long run and actually causes them a lot of problems, not only in higher education/other study but in work as well.

During my year out I worked with two men who hadn't a clue about independent working, just did what they wanted, expecting someone to help them do everything. They were between the second and third year of computer science degrees and could barely program a calculator. Turned out they'd passed all their courses by copying programs from textbooks and stuff they found online. Which doesn't work in the real world. Especially not if you're programming equipment which still used punchcards and other equipment from the sixties (which we were!); they disappeared to another department after a couple of weeks.

Often wonder what happened to them (not a lot I suspect!).

At primary school ds was given a summer design homework - he did it all himself - not being great at art/creative stuff, it wasn't a knock-out piece but it was his. What I hadn't expected was the other parents to help their child with the summer homework and they were some really amazing projects! but they made ds's work look especially shabby - ds got a week's break-time detention for his poor effort from an NQT - I had to go into the school and have a "chat" about how punishing someone for being crap at art really did very little to help them express themselves creatively.

As a lecturer I'd see people pushed into doing the course I was teaching. Very sad to watch them struggle.

I knew a guy who "failed" his PhD due to plagiarism. It's taken very seriously if found out and can really affect your future.

DS has taken this to the opposite extreme (he's autistic) and gets paranoid about whether it's OK to have even one sentence overlap with things he's read elsewhere. Yes, DS, you are allowed to repeat the dictionary definition when explaining terms.

I did run DD's 23 random separate bits of write up for one coursework project into a single document, skim-read it and point out to her that she'd already covered everything they were asking for, and she just needed to organise it rather than starting again for the 24th time.

Sometimes I've also written down what they say as they explain things out loud, and offered their own words back to them when they have 'No Clue How to Start this Sodding Essay'. Both seem to have the same gulf between the spoken and written word, though only one has a diagnosis.

I hope that these are techniques they are learning, rather than parental cheating.

I've been on both sides of the divide as a small child in Brownies!

I failed my Brownie Writing badge as the examiner refused to believe I'd written my own story. I absolutely know that this is a humblebrag really, but it made my mother (a teacher, and the source of my unnecessarily weird vocabulary) very cross.

On the other hand, I won the Flower Arranging prize because, quote, 'That was the only one that looked like it really was done by a 7 year old'.

I know loads of parents whose DC are at a school near the top of the league tables every year and they all talk quite openly about doing their DCs' GCSE coursework for them. As they are mostly City professionals/doctors etc it is little wonder that school then gets fantastic results. One parent mentioned to me the other day that they were surprised that this school got so few into Oxbridge when compared with their results - bit my tongue but wanted to point out that the aptitude tests were probably designed to pick out those who were able rather than enabled....